Writing is my Dream, Retail is my Nightmare…

True Confession Time: The reason I have failed in keeping my blog up to date, besides the ever-present procrastination and downright laziness excuses, is a nagging concern that my attempts at anonymity would fail and my retail employer would fire me. Silly, I know. But I guess I have an irrational phobia of being fired from a retail job. What would I tell people? I was fired for exposing the lunacy that is retail in an online blog that hardly anyone reads? Who would believe that?

But recently I began taking a local writing class. This is the actually the first writing class I have ever taken (hard to believe all this raw talent just comes naturally, huh?). I was lucky enough to get an awesome instructor (we don’t get marked in this class so my praise is genuine and not a sad attempt to be teacher’s pet).

When asking what we have written in the past, I her told about my blog and my concerns about getting fired for it. She then directed me to www.waiterrant.net and told me she would like to see my blog. I was just going to send her the link, before I realized how long it had been since I updated it. So, conscience and conscientiousness be damned, this one’s for you, Jen! (Just don’t tell anyone who I am or where I work!)

While I may have an irrational phobia of being fired from retail, others may not feel quite so strongly about it. Or, they may just not think about it at all. Hence the occasionally less-than-stellar performers that are sometimes hired within our retail organization.

Recently a new supervisor was hired at my store. Usually our supervisors are promoted from within, but every so often I suppose the need arises to look outside and bring in some new blood. Too bad sometimes the devil you don’t know is worse than the devil you do. Our new supervisor was from day one, quite simply, a Boob. Not even a nice, full, perky Boob. But rather a falsely inflated, skin-beginning to sag from the unnatural weight of it, Boob.

Luckily, I didn’t have a lot of interaction with the Boob. I work part-time, minimal hours, usually in the evening. But I had enough interaction with the Boob to fully come to appreciate his Boob-ness.

I guess early on in his tenure he must have been instructed to ‘be more visible’ to the staff. I am sure I am not the only one who has had to resist the urge to find the person who told him that and choke the life out of them because what it led to was the Boob sauntering around the store, in a neon orange golf shirt, loudly proclaiming to any and all staff who couldn’t outrun him “I’m being visible! See me? I’m visible!” Well if we couldn’t see you in that shirt, we wouldn’t miss hearing you.

I think he also liked to make sure customers knew he was the boss. ‘Mr. In-Charge Boob‘. Often, with a line-up at the cash register, he would swagger over, do some weird snap and point thing that was reminiscent of a bad imitation of The Fonz and loudly proclaim to the hard-working, bedraggled cashier; “Emily! Doing an awesome job!”, to which Emily would glance up in thinly veiled disgust before continuing to ring through the line-up of customers who now looked at the cashier with a pitying “you have to work for this boob?” look.

The Boob would then glance past the cashier, see me trying to hide my head in a plastic bag full of hangers, do his ‘Fonz move’ again and yell even louder “RetailWriter! You’re doing an awesome job, too!” Just in case I felt left out from his condescending praise.

But my troubles paled in comparison to the staff-members whose department he ‘managed’ and who had to report to him. The Boob didn’t like to be told or taught how to do things properly. He wanted to be ‘in charge’ of how things were done, even if he didn‘t have a clue what he was doing. Even if, every time he tried to do something he screwed it up so that one of his staff would then have to go in and fix his screw up. He immediately knew more than they did. And that didn’t go over well.

The Boob is gone now, fired, for undisclosed reasons, and I can only assume HR doesn’t have a ‘for being a boob’ reason or they would have used it. The staff from his old department smile more now, and even if they are still trying to fix his screw ups, at least he isn’t there to screw it up again.

Part of me feels bad for the guy. He has a family. Hopefully someone told him he was a boob, and what it was he did that made him a boob (I’m guessing if you’re a boob, you don’t know you’re a boob, right?) so that he can grow and learn from the experience, and not go on to torment the staff at some other unsuspecting retail store.